


The Loneliest Number

by hollyandvice (hiasobi_writes)



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, M/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-05
Updated: 2020-04-05
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:14:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23496616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hiasobi_writes/pseuds/hollyandvice
Summary: When Steve Rogers was born, he had dozens of soul marks scattered across his skin.Tony Stark has only ever had one soul mark.People are born with all the soul marks of the people that might one day be their soulmate. Steve has watched as all of his fade away. Tony has only ever had one.
Relationships: Steve Rogers/Tony Stark
Comments: 30
Kudos: 437





	The Loneliest Number

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Serenity514](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Serenity514/gifts).



> Written for the following prompt from Serenity in the PotS discord server: Soulmate AU-You start life with multiple marks of people who could be your soul mate. Tonys watched as all of them fade away maybe because hes changed or they have,until he has none. Steves only ever had one. Or vise versa
> 
> I clearly went with the vice versa option, my friend. I'm sorry?
> 
> Thanks to @Publisher021 for the quick beta job!!

When Steve Rogers was born, he had dozens of soul marks scattered across his skin. some were large, some were small, all were brilliantly colored in that way that suggested a life well-lived. When he was young, he used to draw lines to connect the soul marks to each other. More than once, Sarah caught him tracing other marks across his skin in the limited empty spaces. It was enough to convince her that, no matter how sickly her son seemed even from a young age, he would at least find someone that loved him.

The first time one of the marks disappears, the small yellow bird that had rested on the back of Steve's right hand, Steve cries for days. He's barely three, but he already understands that the marks are important, and that losing one is something to mourn. He knows he's special for having so many, and Sarah thinks he must be worried that he's less special with one less.

"It's okay, baby. They're supposed to disappear. Until you find that one person that makes your whole world light up, you're going to lose your soul marks."

By the time Steve is five, about half of his marks have disappeared. By the time he's ten he's down to about fifteen marks. And when his mother passes he's down to six. Two more of those marks disappear between her death and his enlistment, and the only thing he's afraid of when they put him under for the serum is that he'll wake up and have no soul marks left. He comes out with all three intact, only to watch one more fade as the light dies in Erskine's eyes. It's the first time he's actually noticed one of his marks fading as it happens, and it hurts even more than he could ever have thought. As soon as the mark fades, Steve closes his eyes, grits his teeth, and takes off at a run.

Anything to make this ache a little less.

When he gets to Europe and hears the news about Bucky, he has more than just a hunch carrying him into the fray to save him. The silver rifle that has run up his left forearm since the day he was born has been fading in and out for days, but it's burning bright against his skin right now. Steve knows it matches the one on Bucky's right arm and he knows that if there's a chance to save Bucky he's going to take it without a second thought. So he does, and he brings Bucky back and finds a new family that lessens some of the ache of being so far from home.

It takes about three more interactions with Howard after the first two before another mark fades, and Steve's pretty sure he knows what that's about. Then he's down to just two, and he knows exactly who they both belong to. It's why he dithers for so long about asking Peggy out, unwilling as he is to risk losing Bucky entirely to reach out for her. But, as his life has so often reminded him, waiting too long might mean losing any chance at having what he wants. He loses Bucky and Peggy and his own life in what feels like a matter of hours.

As the water crawls up over his head, dragging him under to a watery demise. Steve wonders if having as many marks as he did was truly meant to be a curse instead of a blessing.

* * *

Tony Stark has only ever had one soul mark. If asked, he'd put on a smile and tell you it's because only one person will ever be enough of a badass for him. It's enough to deflect the media and most of his acquaintances away from the ache in his chest. Still, the one saving grace of the soul mark centered on his left collarbone is that it's big enough to splay over his shoulder and part of his pectoral. He likes to think that he knows better than to believe in superstition and old wives' tales, but the one he's never been able to let go of is the idea that the bigger the soul mark, the stronger the bond. His mother had told him as much when his soul mark came in, and it's one of the few things of hers that he still has to hang onto. So he clings to it with all the desperation of a man that wishes he knew his worth and refuses to let go.

He just hopes whoever is on the other end of his soul mark is worth it.

He wonders more than once what it would have been like to have more than one mark. What it would have been like to have options. Opportunities. A chance to choose the person that he loves and love them back in their own right. He wishes he had that option, but he's known from a young age that there would only ever be one person for him. So he looks and looks and looks and when he thinks he's found them he holds on with all his might.

Rhodey is the first one he clings to. A friend that wanted Tony not for his money or his smarts but just for himself. For whatever fucked up, messed up person Tony Stark was at age fourteen. Rhodey had taken Tony under his wing and taught him how to pretend to be a typical person, how to fit in and be what the world wanted him to be. Rhodey could have been so much more if he'd had a matching mark. It takes Tony three years before he gets brave enough to ask. It's the night before Tony's graduation and he's drunk on relief and joy and something like hope. He knows Rhodey's seen his soul mark before on the many, _many_ occasions that he's had to drag a drunken Tony away from an ill-advised party. It's only with the alcohol to loosen his tongue and Tony's impending graduation that he finds the strength to ask.

"Do we match?"

Rhodey doesn't look at him. It's enough to tell Tony both that Rhodey knows what he's asking and the answer to his question. Tony tries to play it off, tries to pretend it hadn't meant anything, but Rhodey knows him better than that. "No," he says, voice low and as gentle as it can possibly be. "No, we don't."

Tony looks away.

Rhodey puts his arm around Tony's shoulder, pulling him in close. "That doesn't mean you're not important to me. You'll always be important to me."

"Right," Tony says, voice low and shaking. "Yeah, I know."

It still hurts.

It hurts enough that Tony spends the next fifteen years fucking around with whoever will have him. Whoever will let him steal a moment of their time. And then, later on, whoever he deigns to give a moment of his time to. But he never takes his shirt off. Bad enough that the whole world knows he only has one soul mark thanks to a media slip from Maria years ago. No need to let them see it and go spouting ridiculousness to everyone they see.

So he waits, impatient as he ever was, and lets himself live life to the fullest in the meantime.

Pepper is the second one he takes a chance on. She's incredible. She's confident and brilliant and whip smart and Tony knows he'd be damn lucky to earn a chance with a woman like her. So he tones down some of his more chaotic tendencies and leaves the worst of who he might have been in the dust and tries to be worthy of her.

She makes no secret that she knows that there's a conflict of interest between them and that she will not resign just to make him happy. But Tony's willing to wait for as long as it takes to move through that uncertainty and be whatever she needs him to be in the meantime. He still never lets her see his mark, though. He knows better than to risk his happiness so quickly and easily. He takes his time, waiting for the right moment to show her.

In the end, he doesn't get to choose. It takes a kidnapping and a near loss of life to have him opening up enough to let her see. She's putting her hands into the hole in his chest and even then he can see the way her eyes dart up to the mark that still spreads over his left pectoral. He doesn't let himself look too closely at her expression or think too hard about what it might mean. Not now. Not in the thick of things.

But when, after Obie is dead and gone and Tony tries to ask her one more time if they can be something different than what they are, she just smiles at him with a deep sadness in her eyes. Before she can speak, Tony shakes his head.

"I get it," he says. He takes one single liberty and kisses the corner of her mouth, an indulgence that she allows him. "Thank you for everything.

Then he steps out into the press conference and reveals himself to the world without throwing any caution to the wind.

Eventually Tony learns not to expect anyone to have a matching mark. There's too many people, too much going on, and his mark isn't even whole anymore. Who would want to be with someone that was too weak to protect their mark? No one, that's who.

So Tony gets used to having no one and, when Fury and his team refuse to let him lean too far into that tendency, he learns to live a life that matters to him. Only to him. Because apparently everyone else is too busy living their own lives to have space for him. Not that he'd want them to. He's his own man now and that's what really matters above all else.

He's his own man, and now no one can take that away from him. No one.

* * *

When Steve wakes, all his soul marks are gone. It doesn't hurt as much as he thinks it should, and there's something safe in knowing that there's really nothing and no one left for him. That the world has moved on and there's no one left that really, truly remembers him the way he was. He keeps his head down and does what is asked of him and it takes weeks after the Battle of New York before he realizes that Tony Stark has made a home for himself in Steve's heart. It takes weeks— _months_ of battles against everything from warlords to deranged scientists to aliens before Steve lets himself think that maybe, just maybe, there could be something to this feeling in his chest. The way he wants to lean into Tony's touch when the man helps him up on the battlefield. The way he wants to follow Tony down to his workshop any time he goes down there after a debriefing. He knows this feeling. He just hasn't felt it in too long. Not on this side of the ice.

But Steve doesn't have a soul mark, and everyone knows Tony only has one. No one knows what it looks like — it's one of Tony's many closely guarded secrets — but a person with only one mark is rare. Steve may not know Tony very well, but he knows him well enough to know that he's a bit of a romantic at heart. No matter what he might have done in the late nineties and early 2000's, Steve knows Tony's one of those fellas that's just waiting for the right partner, same as Steve himself.

So Steve keeps his distance, and if he notices Tony shooting glances his way more and more over the time they are friends, he doesn't say a damn thing about it.

True to form, though, Tony seems to notice exactly what's going on. Steve watches as his glances grow more and more knowing, and when Tony leans in to kiss him one day in the workshop it doesn't feel as unexpected as Steve thinks it should.

"I don't have a mark," he whispers when Tony pulls away.

"I know."

"It means we're not matching."

"I know."

"Tony—"

Tony puts a finger over Steve's lips. "I already know I'm not going to find my person. Even if I do—" He shakes his head. "Things are different now, Steve. The world is bigger. Not everyone finds their soulmate. Not even everyone marries their soulmate. We know more than we did then. We can see more. This… this is what I want, Steve. I want to try." His smile is small and curious, wondrous and terrified. "Do you?"

Steve leans forward, pressing his forehead to Tony's. "Yes," he whispers against Tony's lips. "I do."

Steve insists on taking Tony on three dates before he lets Tony take him to bed. It's all lips and hands and closeness before then, though, and it's enough that Steve knows the curves of Tony's body before he thinks he has any right to. Tony just laughs when he says as much, and drags him up to bed with him after their third date.

Tony starts slowly, with the things that he already knows that Steve likes, A hand between his shoulder blades; his lips moving in slow, easy concert against Steve's; his fingers in Steve's hair as Steve kisses his way down Tony's neck. It's enough to feel like maybe this will be right, be enough, be _okay_ in a way that nothing has been in far too long.

And only when he finds he can't wait any longer does Steve pull back, meet Tony's eyes and ask. "Can I?"

Tony's eyes go wide. "Yes," he says before Steve can even figure out what he's asking for. "Yes. Anything."

Steve leans in to kiss his lips one more time, a promise in the touch that means more than Steve can say with words. Then he turns away to strip out of his shirt. Behind him, Tony inhales sharply. Steve starts to turn around to look at him, to ask what's gone wrong, but Tony puts a hand on his shoulder to stop him. Steve stays perfectly still, at a loss to what it is that has Tony stopping him. He hears Tony moving around, fumbling for something, and then Tony's putting his phone in Steve's hands.

There, spread across the canvas of Steve's back in a way that he's never before imagined, is a massive soul mark. It's a dark red star over an inverted electric blue triangle and Steve's heart catches in his chest. If this means he has a soulmate… if this means he has to give Tony up…

Steve turns around, words already spilling from his lips. "I didn't know, Tony, I swear I didn't—" Then he catches sight of Tony's chest and the slightly mottled mark across his chest. Steve blinks. Glances down at the picture on the phone in his hand. Looks back up at Tony. "Oh."

Tony's answering smile is soft. "You really didn't know?"

Steve swallows and shakes his head. "I didn't know."

Tony nods. "They tend to keep them out of our medical reports for our privacy, but I never… I never thought…"

Steve leans in before Tony can finish that sentence, pressing his lips to Tony's. "I love you," he whispers against Tony's lips. "I love you so fucking much. I thought it was too soon, but—"

"No," Tony answers, reaching up to cup the back of Steve's neck and hold him close. "Never. I…" He pulls back. "I'm not going to be able to say it right away."

Steve takes that for the caution it is. He doesn't care. "That's okay. It doesn't change how I feel about you. I still…" He swallows. "If you still want this, Tony, you can have me. All of me."

Tony makes a choked-off sound and pulls Steve in close. "Okay," he whispers against Steve's neck. "Okay. Thank you."

Steve frowns at that. He reaches up, wrapping his hands around Tony's waist. "For what?"

"For being mine."

"Always, Tony." Steve closes his eyes, tightening his grip around Tony and pulling him even closer. "Always."

They don't have sex that night, both too overwhelmed by the reality of what they've just learned. But Tony refuses to let Steve go, clinging to him like a limpet. Steve doesn't take much convincing to spend the night curled up in Tony's arms. His back is over-warm from where their soul marks are pressed together, but he doesn't mind. If it means having Tony in his arms, he really doesn't care. This is what he wants, and having it is more than he ever thought it could have been.

And if, when morning comes, they elect to stay in bed all day and make up for lost time, well, that's no one's business but their own.


End file.
